Tag Archives: friends

Lawl. My 2006 high school graduating class is planning a 10-year reunion. I have basically zero interest in seeing any of those people again (except maybe my little gaggle of weirdo friends; those guys were great), but it would be interesting to see where everyone is in their lives 10 years after high school. Are they where they thought they’d be? I know I’m sure as hell not.

If this was going on when I was “scheduled” to be in Moscow (early May…hopefully), I might go, but it’s in the middle of July and I don’t really have much of an urge to fly all the way to Moscow to see people I hardly remember and hardly cared about.

The only reason I’d like to go is to see the old gang of friends. I still care about them. I have a good picture of us all outside the Palouse mall taken sometime in our senior year (or maybe even that summer after); it’d be pretty cool if we could re-do that photo ten years later, eh?

So remember on Monday when I said I didn’t want to talk about the Idler’s Rest thing ‘cause it was too freaky?

I want to talk about the Idler’s Rest thing.

Actually, my original post on it way back in 2008 was pretty short and crappy, mainly because when I posted it I was still freaked out by the whole thing. But given that it’s been awhile (and given that I’m still thinking about those Reddit posts, haha), let’s relive some trauma, okay?

ALRIGHTY!

So this happened in the summer of 2008. Rob and I usually took my mom’s car on the weekend—either Saturday or Sunday—to go on our little “dates” because we didn’t want to go to my dad’s house and we couldn’t go to his house because…yeah.

Anyway, on this particular day we decided to drive out to Idler’s Rest and just hang out there for the day. I think we brought a tent and camped out until it got dark, and then just sat in the car.

Actually, we put the back seats down and just laid in the very back looking up at the stars through the moon roof. And no, there was no perversion; what we were actually doing was debating free will and determinism, haha. I remember our debate lasted for like 5 hours and by the time it had mostly worn down it was near midnight.

Anyway, we kept talking for awhile until all of a sudden we both got really quiet. I’d gotten this extremely unsettling feeling—like our lives were in immediate danger. I look over at Rob and he whispered the same thing—that he suddenly felt like something was really wrong.

It felt like there was something right outside the car. It felt like it—and we were both feeling like if we were to get up off the back floor the thing, whatever it was, would see us and attack.

I am not exaggerating; I know it sounds super dumb, but we were both actually shaking because we really, really felt like we were in danger. I don’t know if it was an animal or a human, but I’ve never felt so scared in my entire life. It’s hard to describe exactly what it was like, but it was almost as if we could sense it trying to look into the car to see if there were people in it.

(I’m getting serious chills writing about this even though it’s been like six years.)

So we stayed as still as we could for like ten minutes and the feeling never passed, so eventually we decided that we’d motor to the front seats, chuck the keys in the ignition as fast as we could, and gun it out of there.

Which is what we did.

Even on the ride back into Moscow that unsettling feeling didn’t go away for either of us. Later, after I’d dropped Rob off at his house, he messaged me asking if I’d gotten home okay. We still were both feeling really, really scared. I actually checked the newspaper the next morning to see if there had been anyone killed out at Idler’s Rest (or in Moscow itself)—that’s how strong the feeling was.

It did finally go away by that next morning and neither of us could ever offer an explanation of why we’d felt that way, but we’d both felt it very, very strongly.

It’s still the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me, even though nothing really happened. It wouldn’t have been so scary, I think, if only one of us had felt so unsettled, but we both felt it and we’d both started feeling it at the same time.

Hahaha, so this might seem like a totally random thing to post (isn’t everything I post like that, though?), but I was reminded of this incident a few nights ago and I still think it’s hilarious, so I want to actually write it down somewhere so that if I ever forget about it, I can have a good laugh upon rediscovering it.

Alright. So. Matt (and Maggie, if you read this), you guys might remember our first Band Camp for Marching Band back in 2006. Recall that, at the end of that week, the sousas handed out little flyers to all of us, urging us to attend the “band seminar” in the evening. It wasn’t required, they said, but attendance was recommended.
As you also probably recall, the “seminar” was basically a drinking party held at one of the sousa’s apartments (I think the “distinguished speaker” was Dr. Winehard or something).

And everyone who got the flyer pretty much knew that this was just a party in disguise, right?
Well…wrong.

I distinctly remember Beau walking over to me and going, “I don’t really want to go, but we probably should, ‘cause it’d make us look good.” And with my matching level of naivety about college, I agreed and said that we should walk over together.
So later that night, with our freaking backpacks and notebooks, we head over to the address on the flyer, fully expecting an hour-long seminar where we would have to take notes (I’m not even kidding, oh my god, we were dumb).
We get like two houses away from the address and all we can hear is this booming music an a lot of people singing/shouting/being rowdy. And Beau looks at me and says, “I think it’s a party.” I agree. We slink back to the dorms, ashamed of our inability to have figured it out beforehand like EVERYONE ELSE.

I brought this story up to Beau the semester I graduated (fall 2008, so like two years later) and he totally denied it ever happening. But it did! He’s so embarrassed by it still I bet, haha.

So yeah. Just a funny little “we were stupid and didn’t know what college was” anecdote.
I still think it’s hilarious.

(This isn’t a poem I hate poems this is just me rambling sorry I’ll shut up I haven’t slept since Thursday.)
(I’m also super emotional ‘cause someone I’ve connected to very strongly over the past few weeks just left Moscow forever.)

I am the friend that helps you move. Right after the last final of the semester or at 3:30 in the morning, I am the one unfolding empty boxes and asking you what you want to pack first.

I am the friend that cleans the kitchen. You pack the stuff in the pantry and last of the cutlery and I scrub the counters, cabinets, and fridge until everything is as clean as the day you moved in.

I am the friend who distracts you. You need a break and so do I, so I suggest we watch a few YouTube videos and we sit on the warm pile of freshly-dried laundry and watch clips of Disney movies for half an hour.

I am the friend that buys the packing tape. It’s 9 PM and you’re panicking because you’ve got an empty tape dispenser but three more boxes still and I run to the gas station down the road while you continue to prioritize your possessions in anticipation for my return with more tape.

I am the friend that folds your clothes. It’s your least favorite thing to do, but you don’t want to just throw your clothes into boxes. So I fold each item for you to pack neatly away. Yes, even the underwear.

I am the friend who makes space in your car. I play Tetris with your boxes and appliances and manage to fit in the sleeping bag and toolkit that you were sure you’d have to leave behind.

I am the friend that drives you around. You need to take your unused U-Haul boxes back but there’s not enough room in your car, so we load them into mine and I take you to return them. I remind you that you need to stop at the post office and request a permanent change of address.

I am the friend who sees you last. The apartment is clean and the car is packed and you’re ready to leave. We don’t know how to say goodbye, so we just hug again and again until it’s finally time for you to go. I wave from the sidewalk and you wave from your open car window until we can no longer see each other.

And even though I am the friend you have known for the least amount of time, I am also the friend who will miss you the most.

I have 111 friends on Facebook. I wanted to see the distribution of birthdays across the months (and the zodiac signs, because why not?). So I Facebook stalked everyone and found that 97 of my 111 friends had their birthdays listed (at least month and day). Here’s the distribution by month:

I knew I had a lot of February, May, and November, but I didn’t know I had so many April and July. Haha, look at August and September. Very interesting, especially in comparison to this.

This year sucks ‘cause Halloween is in the freaking middle of the week. But I was thinking that the old gang could get together either the weekend before or the weekend after, get all Halloween dressed up, crash Shari’s, then come back to the basement for a good old fashioned basement party. Preferably still in costume. Or OUT of costume, if you know what I mean.

…was the very first day of college for myself and at least two of my readers.

Exactly six years ago we became official college students, taking our very first classes and having our very first college-level grade-related panic attacks.

(Maybe that last part was just me)

It’s crazy what six years can do, eh? We’re all in very separate places but still in the same town.

I often think the same things of my high school friends as well. I wonder about the different paths we’ve all taken to get us to where we are now.

Life is a weird, weird thing.

Six years ago, I didn’t even want to go to college. I thought it was the next unavoidable step in life, so I just went. I wanted nothing to do with math/stats/anything quantitative and was a psychology/music/theatre triple major (hahahaha).

Now I’m teaching a freaking statistics class.

What about the rest of you guys? How much has changed for you in the last six years? What’s stayed the same?

$5 to the person who correctly guesses which two are mine and which three are Nick’s.Dr. LegCaptain CrotchleyShoak (Shark Oak), the Overzealous Jesus FreakLevy Jones McBones Jr.: Astronaut(yes, that’s a fish in his helmet)

HIPPOTRON

Despite this silliness, Hero Machine is a pretty fantastic website. Give it a try! Make a super hero. Or a disembodied anthropomorphic leg.

>> I’m sure all the great philosophers debated free will and determinism half-naked, it just makes more sense

>> oh, and can you think of some random household items, or really any random items… non-electric>> You mean like spatulas and stuff?>> God, I picked a phallic symbol…

>> “Where are my 25 credits? WHERE ARE THEY?!?”

>> College is fun except for this Locke paper

>> I feel empty inside>> But now I have 2.90 GB of free space

>> Boobs are the first image results I get for the search “tubular” in Google Images>> That’s awesome

>> What would be even more awesome would be a site like http://www.checkoutthisgirlscaboose.com and then have full of pictures of female heads and torsos attached to real cabooses or something>> Now I’m trying to resist finding a picture of a naked girl, a picture of a caboose, and opening Photoshop

>> We were walking to Shari’s and he goes completely out of the blue, “it would be so cool to just embed glitter into the pavement on the street”>> And I go, “what if there was a wind storm and all the glitter got picked up?”>> Then, “what if an F5 tornado ripped through a Midwestern glitter factory and killed a bunch of people with glitter shards?”>> And, “wait, what the hell is glitter really made of?”>> So we decided it was made of chopped up Midwestern hicks

>> If I had three puppets and Lil’ Jon in my window, I’d be hyper, too

Also, it feels good to walk (for exercise) again. Tucson’s too ungodly hot for walking now, plus now that I have a job I can’t spend 6+ hours a day walking around the city. My cardio exercise has been confined to gunning it on the stationary bike at the Y as of late. Not that that’s bad, but I have butt calluses from it and for some reason I can’t zone out biking like I can when I walk. So today I went 18 miles and it felt fantastic (except for my little toes which are covered in blisters).